


The Owl and the Dead Boy

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Grey Feathers [6]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Colorado, Confrontations, Darkwing Duck - Freeform, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Drama, Earth-3, Escape, Gen, Humor, Identity Issues, Mirror Universe, Past Brainwashing, Prison, Revenge, Things Not Going According To Plan, cliffs, except not anymore, pranking as psychological warfare, some gloating, that is kind of the point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-27 07:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6276133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You aren't frightening, Bruce. They've taken your weapons, and your secrets, and your wealth, and your Court, and all your servants who hadn't already turned on you. You aren't king anymore, and you aren't the Owl either. You're only a man."</p><p>"And you're not even that," Bruce murmured, poisonous, unruffled.</p><p>"Maybe not," Richard allowed. And then, for the first time, the corners of his lips bent up in the least of smiles. "But I've been learning."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Knocking At My Window

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first segment of this 'verse ever posted, on ffdotnet in March 2014. Wowza.

In a darkened, barren cell, on the highest security level of the highest security prison in the world, this is what the security cameras would have seen, had they still been working:

A certain dark-haired man narrowed eyes like ice at the space beyond the bars that separated him from his solid steel cell door. He was manacled, even here, and wearing only the shapeless grey costume issued to prisoners, but there was no defeat in the set of his shoulders or the cold lines of his dreadfully recognizable face. Not long ago, he had been the wealthiest man on Earth, and had more power than almost any king. Not long ago, he had come close to ruling the world.

"Show yourself," he commanded.

Silence, for a moment, as though he had been talking to himself. Then out of a thin shadow that didn't seem it could have hidden anyone, there folded a lean figure in a hooded coat of charcoal-grey, faceless in the gloom. With its right hand it leveled a viciously sharp bolt in a small crossbow at the prisoner's heart, and with the other reached up to pull back the hood.

It turned out to be another man, much younger, who might easily have been the first's natural son, though his features were finer and his eyes a far darker blue. His face was nearly as cold as the prisoner's, and even more expressionless.

The man behind bars wasted only a fraction of a second on recognition, and no time at all on surprise. "Talon."

The younger man narrowed his eyes very slightly. "My _name_ is _Richard_."

"Is that what cowards call themselves?"

A tightness about still lips. "I only wish I'd run from you sooner."

"You ran because you _failed_."

"I'm glad I failed."

The older man snorted, very softly. " _Are_ you? Wilson will hunt you down sooner or later, so long as he's alive, and he's not the type to show mercy to the penitent."

"I took the life of one of his children and the voice from the other. If he does to me what you did to Joe Chill, I won't be surprised."

Scorn covered the prisoner's face. "Are you going to _let_ him?"

A pause. "No."

"Then are you really sorry?"

"Not sorry enough to die," the once-Talon shrugged. "But sorry enough not to kill him. I'm choosy with my murder, these days."

"You are a failure."

"I am what I am." Richard did not seem to feel the need to say anything more, but merely held his position and watched the man in the cell where he stood, some little way beyond the bars that would electrocute at a touch.

"You aren't here to help your old master escape," the prisoner stated, at length. Glanced from the young man's blank eyes to the sharp, sharp bolt trained on his heart. No sign of anything but calm. "Are you planning to kill me?"

The renegade Talon stood in silence for a moment, eyes narrowed again. "I want to," he said finally. "You have no idea how much I want to. But there are a lot of others who've made claims on your head. It seems greedy to cut ahead of the line, when I didn't even help bring you down. You can only die once, after all."

He drifted a little closer to the bars on utterly silent feet, the razor bolt never wavering. "You aren't frightening, Bruce. They've taken your weapons, and your secrets, and your wealth, and your Court, and all your servants who hadn't already turned on you. You aren't king anymore, and you aren't the Owl either. You're only a man."

"And you're not even that," Bruce murmured, poisonous, unruffled.

"Maybe not," Richard allowed. And then, for the first time, the corners of his lips bent up in the least of smiles. "But I've been learning."

"I made you," the prisoner once known as Owlman cut out the words like individual sharp-edged shards of steel. "Everything you are comes from me."

His former student shook his head a very little, not disagreeing but dismissing. "I know you think this is just a setback," he said levelly. "That you'll get out of here and start building up a new power base, and take back your city. But if you ever do get out, if one of the others doesn't get to you first— _then_ I'll kill you.

"Yes, you made me. So you know what I can do. If I come for you, you won't even know I'm there until you're dead."

_'Speak not a whispered word of them, or here comes Talon for your head—!'_

The Talon darted toward the cell sharply, suddenly, something small cupped in his left hand, and the Owl jumped back, guard up, his hands painfully empty of anything that might serve as weapon or shield, and chained too close together to be much use. But the rogue assassin's hand only slapped against the wall and withdrew, without ever quite approaching the bars. The prisoner glared suspiciously from the back of his cell. His visitor's eyebrows twitched, infinitesimally.

And the tiny device now glued to reinforced concrete squawked out tinnily: " _I am the terror that flaps in the night!_ " A bar of triumphal cartoon music blared, and then silence fell again.

The Owl stared, flat disbelief, and then his face twisted with fury. Talon—Richard—smiled again, a little wider. "I figured there was a reason you always hated the Jokester so much," he said.

" _I am the terror that flaps in the night!_ "

"So I copied his style."

"Talon…" Owlman gritted out.

"Richard," corrected his old protégée, his old servant, the first of his tame assassins and the first to run from him. Ten years gone. " _Grayson_. There is no Talon anymore. Just a lone old bird in a cage."

The tiny speaker on the wall broke into low, musical hooting; a recognizable pattern. A message, in the Court of Owls' old coded communication, more rarely used in the modern age but still preserved, still taught to its members and its weapons. _Failure,_ it cooed. _Prisoner. Death._

" _I am the terror that flaps in the night!_ " it declaimed happily a moment later. _Dun-dun-dun-dah! **Bing!**_

"It's on a randomizer," said Richard. "Good luck sleeping."

He melted back into the shadows. "I won't see you again, unless you get free. And you won't see me at all."

" _I am the terror that flaps in the night!_ " ( _Dun-dun-dun-dah! **Bing!** )_

Owlman's teeth grated so loudly it was easily audible across the room, and for the first time since he was six years old, as he picked his way out of the deepest dungeon in the world, very quietly, Richard Grayson laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ^^ As mentioned in the tags, the 'terror that flaps in the night' is Darkwing Duck. Who, uhm, is a Batman parody whose archnemesis is his evil self from an alternate universe. I couldn't not, okay?
> 
> Grayson has totally been mentally rehearsing parts of that speech for years, btw.


	2. This Night Whispers My Name

The Owl remained standing in the dimness of his prison, after his traitorous Talon had gone.

The noisy device was unnecessarily near the cell. Certainly that meant it was slightly louder, but—Talon had specially advanced to place his noisemaker _precisely_ out of reach. Or rather, precisely _in_ the reach of Owlman, if he was willing to endure a little pain.

Unhesitating, unwilling to waste a second of whatever window of nonsurveillance was left in whatever Talon had done to the cameras, Bruce Wayne dislocated his own thumb, pulled his left hand from its cuff, crossed to the bars, and jammed his arm into the furthest-right gap.

The bars were not really far enough apart to admit his elbow, but he forced it through anyway, crushed the bulk of a bicep through the narrow space, whole body jerking with electric current that prevented any attempt to relax the muscle to fit more easily, teeth clenched against any sound of pain or effort that might bring a guard. Bent his wrist, closed his fingers around the tiny machine, plucking it free of the putty that held it to the wall. _Failure,_ it hooted. _Prisoner._

Somehow, he managed not to crush it in his hand. Snaked his abused left arm back inside his cell, crossed stiffly back to the bench, and sat. Still twitching slightly from the powerful shock, he returned his hand to its manacle, resettled the abused thumb, and contemplated the device nestled in his palm.

A few microchips, some wires, the powerful little speaker—this was enough. He could engineer an escape with no more than this. Possibly Talon had counted on that; he had said he wanted very much to kill his old teacher, after all. He would be waiting, then. Outside.

" _I am the terror—_ " began the thing in his hand, and he snorted and split open the casing with a thumbnail, ready to start making use of his materials.

Across the room in the patch of shadow, well out of reach, another speaker began to hoot, triggered by the deactivation of the first.

Definitely intentional. And the Owlman smiled, because if it had possessed enough remote signal capacity to communicate even that much, it was going to be even more useful than he'd thought.


	3. Trapped Inside Reality's Maze

Grayson crouched in his hiding place, waiting. Waiting for his enemy to appear—knowing he would. Knowing the resources he had left behind were enough for the man who had trained him to make his escape, at least from the cell if not from the building.

Knowing that, pleasant as it was to imagine otherwise, Bruce Wayne was not a man who would sit cowering within his prison from the threat of his former servant, stooping from the sky to rend at him.

It had been three hours. It might be another three, or thirty-three, before his prey emerged.

He was prepared to wait.

The Crucible had been built to be inescapable, perched three-quarters of the way up a canyon wall, on a broad lip of cliff many would have refused to call more than a particularly deep ledge, with the red stone vaulting upward behind it and dropping away before. The building was all reinforced steel and bank-vault-dense concrete, long and narrow and inaccessible by any normal means. Deliveries and departures took place only by helicopter.

This remoteness had not, of course, much inconvenienced the Ultraman during his first breakout, when he had been able to simply fly out of the canyon, and in his second, several years later, unable to free himself from the power-suppressing cuffs he had used them to catch the skids of a departing helicopter, swung himself up into the cockpit, successfully fought the pilot for possession, and once again flown away to freedom.

Everyone had been very impressed. Let it not be said the Kryptonian had been no more than his freakish genetics influenced by the power of a yellow sun.

Now Richard Grayson clung to the stone, fifty feet up from the prison roof. He was screened from easy view by a narrow ledge of his own, and fixed to the wall above it by deeply-sunk pitons so that he could lean out without concern for balance.

From this vantage point, he could watch almost the entire perimeter. There was no helicopter in residence. Even if Owlman escaped the prison through the small section of wall blocked by the angle, he could only then move _away_ from the building without entering Grayson's field of vision by immediately going straight over the edge at one specific point. In which scenario he would trigger the motion sensors left there against just such an eventuality.

Unless the foundations the government had sunk into the Colorado stone led into hidden tunnels that curved out and away to ground level—unlikely, in an installation constructed specifically for inaccessibility; both Luthor and the architect whose occasional forays into vigilantism went under the name of Life Ward had consulted on the initial construction, and they were neither of them idiots or cowards—Owlman was not getting away from him.

Though oh, Grayson hoped he tried.

It would also be fine if the Crucible guards had recaptured him inside, before he could take advantage of the chance he'd been offered. That gift of false hope would be almost as good a vengeance as the killing blow.

As the fourth hour drew near its close and dawn approached, the canyon echoed with a sound like muffled thunder. A wall near the lip of the canyon had burst outward, sending debris and dust raining down over the edge. It would seem that the Owl had discarded subtlety entirely.

Grayson _dropped_ , jumpline paying out behind him at nearly terminal velocity before it started to slow him, just in time to keep his legs from shattering when he reached the roof, and the minor damage he did incur on impact melted away even as he ran to intercept. The knife in his hand seemed to have its own heartbeat. Never had he ached like this to shed blood.

He reached the edge of the roof, and looked down on the familiar profile through the settling dust. Leapt, a one-handed vault that sent him swinging feetfirst toward his target, and watched the man who had made himself into the essence of fear, who had graven the image of his power into Grayson as into a block of wood, watched him realize too late even to turn his body away from the blow in time to matter. He wore no armor now, only a slate-blue jumpsuit, bore no better weapon than a cudgel stolen from some guard; he was at the mercy which he had done everything in his power to train out of being—

And then, Grayson thought there had been another explosion, for he was thrown back by a force that shattered every bone in his right arm and reverberated across his whole body, and slammed him into the narrow strip of ground between wall and cliff with rib-splintering force.

But there had been no sound, and all the impact had been at that one point of agony just below his elbow, and when he opened his eyes there was no sign of further destruction, and Owlman was still standing where he had been in the moment of his attack, undisturbed.

With another.

The figure looming above him through the dust, standing at Owlman's right hand, bore familiar chiseled features and artfully tousled hair that should be, that everyone _knew_ to be, a long way from here, trapped in a cage in the heart of a grim red sun, under the guardianship of the alien organization that called itself the Golden Lights. Even if he had escaped so quickly and returned to Earth, what would Ultraman have been doing inside the Crucible, on this night of all nights?

" _How?_ " Grayson asked, through lungs that could barely inflate, half the ribs around them snapped apart. One of the dependencies he had never been able to lose was that on oxygen.

The impossible being seemed to understand or, if he misunderstood, still answered the question he'd meant. "Ultraman's clone," he sneered, thumping the middle of his own chest. "I heard you coming when you were still halfway up the cliff."

 _Clone_ , Grayson thought, and that much made sense even if little else did. As the dust began to settle he could see the figure was smaller than it should be, the lines of the face softer. _Uncompleted_ clone, no less. He had sensation in his fingers again, and reached through the undifferentiated agony of his arm to see how well he could move them, wondering where his weapon had fallen. It might be more efficient to plan to draw another knife; he knew where all of those were, even if snatching a weapon up was usually faster than getting one out of the sheath. His left arm was broken in only three places, but it was trapped under him.

A bare foot landed on the twitching digits with the force of an avalanche. "Don't even think about it."

"Boy," Owlman's voice was as cool as ever, but lacked the hardness Grayson remembered from reprimands in his Talon days. "You're wasting time."

"Sorry."

The clone glanced back down at Grayson, gave a little twitch to his shoulders, and then in one motion took the foot off his hand and drew it back to bring forward again in a lazy kick that sent Grayson sailing out over the abyss, unable to even try to save himself, with even his functioning muscles mostly tugging at bones too fractured to move as they should.

"And that," he heard Wayne add, still without enough cold menace, "was even more wasteful."

Grayson knew without elaboration that the Owl meant they should have relieved him of his equipment first. As he fell, he had long seconds to watch the escaping duo, the clone with his enhanced strength of arm sending a cable liberated from somewhere within the prison complex whirring across the hundred foot span of the canyon, biting deep into the stone on the far side with some affixed blade.

The clone was the first onto the wire, swinging hand over hand up the steep incline. Once he reached the far side, braced his feet against the cliff wall, and launched himself the rest of the way up in one long, powerful jump, Richard watched the distant silhouette of the man he had come to kill bend down to follow.

Hand over hand along the wire, up to where the clone was waiting with another rope to haul him up to ground level.

No one had come from the prison to recapture them, though it could hardly be a secret they'd escaped. Grayson found this disappointing. Perhaps everyone inside was dead.

Then the ground hit, and he knew nothing for a long time.


	4. Voyage Without An End

He woke to the sound of a helicopter buzzing low over him.

The brain damage must have been fairly bad, because his body barely hurt, which meant the healing had nearly completed before he regained consciousness.

He’d tried to minimize cranial trauma in the fall—memories were the only part of him that didn’t heal, after all. Hopefully it had just been a bone splinter to the medulla oblongata or something. Some damage to occipital lobe as well, that always made him light-sensitive, and the helicopter’s beams were making his eyes water even without striking him directly.

No obvious mental gaps, thus far. Promisingly, he even recalled why he was in a congealing puddle of his own blood at the bottom of a dried-out canyon.

Hubris.

One of the least useful things he could _possibly_ have learned from Owlman. He squinted his eyes closed again, biting down on his tongue. Tried not to do it to the bleeding point, he’d lost enough already.

The helicopter was making another pass. It wasn’t coming in for a landing. It was a search pattern.

Had they seen him?

He opened his eyes again—how long until dawn?—and waited for the noisy thing to swing past him and further down the canyon, so he shouldn’t be in the occupants’ immediate line of sight. Peeled himself up from the stone. Ugh. They were going to get usable DNA samples from _that_ mess, no way to clean up after himself now. No time.

The canyon was forty meters across at this point, at the level where the Crucible lay. Ninety at the lip. Down here, it was less than twenty. Much too wide to chimney up, of course—he had adequate gear to make it up the rock surface and out, but not quickly or silently.

When installing the Crucible twenty years ago, the CBI had been granted authorization to strategically mine the canyon floor for a kilometer in either direction. He was lucky not to have landed on one, probably. There was extensive signposting and high fences to keep out idiot hikers and most large wildlife.

The mines weren’t very powerful. With as much blood as he’d already lost, stepping on one would likely leave him too dehydrated to perform anywhere near optimally, especially if it left him laid out until the sun had risen on the Colorado desert, but the real danger was the noise, which would bring the search parties sent out to recapture Owlman and his ultraclone sidekick down on him like a ton of broken quarrystone.

He’d have to watch his step very carefully.

He took a step, and swayed.

Watch his step carefully, and _not fall facefirst into a bomb_.

The helicopter was coming around again, and Grayson plastered himself against the nearest rockface (he wanted to say he’d slipped over to it, but his pace had been dangerously close to a stagger) and waited to see if the helicopter reacted at all to his sudden apparent disappearance. They might simply not have spotted him, but it seemed more likely he’d been seen and categorized as a corpse, and thus non-urgent to retrieve.

The searchlight swept over his pool of blood without pausing, and did not double back. If they’d noticed him at all, they hadn’t yet noticed that he was gone. Good. He had some breathing room.

Hugging the cliff, he made his way northeast. There was a heavy electrified fence to get past, which if the feds had any sense would be manned right now just in case, but once he got through that choke-point the south wall of the canyon should fall away until it was barely even a climb.

After that he could bear southeast toward Delta, north toward Grand Junction, or head between them until he hit national forest, and repeat his original disappearing act.

His natural inclination was to do none of the above and just stay vanished, here, where no people were, but every federal agency with an oar in Owlman’s sea was going to be combing these canyons for weeks, and besides it was all rocky desert here and he was badly dehydrated already. Desert survival wasn’t one of his specialties. Crossing forty miles of unfamiliar canyon-riddled desert in a night, while this far off his game, and only _then_ looking for water had an uncomfortably high chance of leaving him collapsed, for the vultures or the authorities or both to pick apart at their leisure.

Grand Junction was obviously best; it was easier to pass unnoticed in a larger town. He could steal himself some non-bloodstained clothes from a house along the way.

There was a river linking the two communities, wasn’t there? He’d hit that as long as he kept heading east. He didn’t know how potable it was or how far away, or how deep a canyon it might occupy. He hadn’t looked into it. Sloppy.

When he was Talon, this would never have been allowed.

Of course, he wouldn’t have been expected to do most of the research on his own then, either. Owlman had worked him hard, but on a narrower range of tasks than you had to be capable of as a free agent. But he _was_ capable. He had been free for almost as long as he had been a tool, and—

 _Hubris_ the faint crunch of gravel underfoot whispered to him. _Just like Owlman. You thought you had complete control so you lingered, you gloated, you set him up to run like a rat from a trap so you could be sure he suffered before the stroke—and then a factor outside your control ruined everything. This will_ certainly _teach the fear at the bottom of your head a lesson about when to shut up._

Lesson: never.

 _Never ever ever stop running scared_ said his training, and he wanted that crooning owl-hoot _dead_ , wanted to wring its feathery neck and snap every long bone in its wings and smash each egg in its nest. Had come here today to kill it for good.

The utter _disinterest_ in Owlman’s voice once the clone had taken him down, not even angry, not even _gloating—_ hate rose into his throat and choked him worse than thirst and he had to stop, just for a moment—for two seconds—before he could trust himself to move forward with sufficient stealth again.

Emotions were a distraction.

Owlman had taught him that, and used it as reason to drive all independence and hesitation out of his weapon, and Grayson owned his feelings now, good and bad, ferociously, _spitefully_. But usually, he could still throttle them back, when he needed to concentrate. Save feeling for when it wouldn’t get in the way.

He’d make for the river, he decided. If it turned out drinkable, he’d use it to rehydrate; if not, he’d follow it north. Even if it was good, he might still follow it. He could decide his final destination once he reached that point. It would depend at least a little on if he made it past the Crucible Canyon checkpoint without being seen.

The tug was there in his feet to cross the river and go on forward to plunge back into the wilderness, as he had once when he was relearning his own name and skin, he felt the urge dragging at him, but…

No. He was not that confused child anymore, tearing at his sooty feathers to see what lay beneath. Owlman was out in the world again, but even with whatever he’d laid by for hard times, even with his monstrous new right hand, what was he? Only a lone old bird, his empire gone to dust.

Waiting would be wise, still. Wait to see what resources the Owl could marshal, now that he had escaped. Wait to see if he kept the loyalty of the clone or not. Wait.

But not forever, not anymore, not now that he’d had a taste of vengeance and seen that man helpless before him, falling back from him in fear. He and Owlman were both fugitives alike, now. He would teach his old master to see him as an enemy to fear and hate whether he was in a cage or not.

And he would not fly, not from the Owl, not ever again.

His name was Richard Grayson, and this assassination might have turned on him like a snake seized by the tail, but he _would not run_ from merely the shadow of an old nightmare.

He crept away from the sound of helicopter rotors, choosing his footing carefully, but he was not _ashamed_. He’d win yet. It was only a matter of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wound up situating the Crucible a bit east and about twice as far south of Colorado National Monument. I don’t know who actually owns the land I put the prison on, but there are a lot of national parks and not a lot of people. The Feds may have eminent-domained the area in the early 90s to contain people like Ultraman.
> 
> The _Flying Outlaws_ series picks up a couple of weeks after this. ^^


End file.
